A GUI (graphical user interface) is widely used as an interface used when a user inputs and outputs information into and from a computer system (hereinafter called a system). The GUI may be evaluated to evaluate system usability. An example of evaluating the GUI is to evaluate the appropriateness of the layout of input/output components and item names. For example, it is evaluated whether there is any portion to impair visibility in the layout of elements, such as item names and information input/output areas, on each screen provided in an evaluation target system the usability of which is to be evaluated.
When such an evaluation is conducted, it is required to check a group, in which several elements are put together, for the presence or absence of a problem, rather than to evaluate the position of each individual element, in view of such a characteristic that adjacent elements or similar elements are perceived as a block (the law of pragnanz in Gestalt psychology).
There are known a GUI automatic evaluation device for automatically evaluating a GUI and a test conducting device (for example, see Patent Documents 1 and 2). The GUI automatic evaluation device described in Patent Document 1 inputs a screen designing guide and accumulates guide data as format rules. The device also accumulates, as information on the GUI, attribute information and attribute values for each window in a system to be evaluated. Then, the device checks the information on the GUI against the rules for each window and outputs the checking results. In Patent Document 1, a means for generating the GUI information from the product specifications, a source program, a GUI building tool or the like is also described.
In the testing device described in Patent Document 2, an operation database (DB), a user sequence designated by a user when executing a test and a complementary sequence complemented to execute the user sequence according to a procedure are stored. Then, when executing the user sequence according to the user sequence execution procedure, the device checks for the state of the GUI part. When the user sequence cannot be executed, the operation DB is searched for an appropriate supplementary sequence so that the user sequence will be executed after the supplementary sequence is executed. The test conducting device described in Patent Document 2 can conduct a test for automatically performing a predetermined operational procedure.
A web screen creating tool, which is capable of checking for the appropriateness of a term on a web screen, is described in Patent Document 3. The web screen creating tool checks a source file of the web screen for homonyms, declensional Kana endings and synonyms of terms pre-registered as being likely to be misspelled. Specifically, when a registered term is detected on the web screen to be evaluated, alternatives to the term are displayed as a list.